Arthur Cole 0:21

Welcome back to the Newt Podcast with me, Arthur Cole. Join us for a walk through the estate with our invited guests to the backdrop of the Somerset Landscape and its wildlife. For this episode, I'm joined by David Morris to explore the secret life of the Barn Owl, how they hunt, what they eat, why they're so extraordinarily well adapted to life after dark, and some of the remarkable biology behind one of our most recognizable birds. We'll also look at the pressures barn owls face in the modern countryside, what practical conservation can do to help, and what we've been doing here at the Newt to encourage their return and increase their numbers. And importantly, we'll hear about the results. Because our Barnows have given us some rather encouraging news. Let's jump straight into it. Well, as you can hear, the raindrops are falling heavily onto the ground, under this wooded area, and I'm joined by countryman Shepherd Hart aficionado, who literally wrote the book on Shepherd Hart, also expert on all manner of farming, farm machinery, and everything that goes along with it, and also knows a little bit, or perhaps a little bit more than most people on owls. And today we're going to be focusing on barn owls. Welcome David. Hello, Arthur.

SPEAKER_01 2:14

Thank you for welcoming me here. And it's lovely to be here at the Newt. And yes, isn't it great to have a drop of rain?

Arthur Cole 2:20

It feels it feels um like a completely different planet, actually, compared to the the dry drought that we've had for the last couple of months. Here we are in a rainforest almost.

SPEAKER_01 2:35

Absolutely, yeah. What a way to describe it. That is exactly what it looks, sounds, feels, and smells like. Are people noticing just that that scent change in the air now that we've got fresh rainfall after all of those weeks of drought? So it's yeah, all the senses are picking it up for me anyway this morning. That's that's what I'm noticing.

Arthur Cole 2:56

David, we're about to walk down the low path towards the east of the estate, and you're gonna take us to one of the Barn Owl boxes that you and the team here at the Newt moved, and you're gonna tell us about it, who has taken up residence in the box.

SPEAKER_01 3:14

Absolutely, let's go.

Arthur Cole 3:20

So, David, Christina, who you've been doing some work with here at the Newt, who is really one of our gardeners, but probably one of our most um ecologically minded gardeners, she spoke with the Barn Owl Trust back in 2019. She noticed that Barn Owls were taking up residence in our newly constructed Dove Cut, and they then gave her some boxes, and she worked with the Woodland team in putting these boxes around the woodlands. Then, six years later, you come in and very kindly offer your years of experience and the boxes get moved. Well, we're coming to one of the first boxes that you moved at the edge of the mile pit. What can you tell us about that?

SPEAKER_01 4:11

Well, that describes us the sort of build-up to this moment, if you like, very well, because it is always more than one person. Yes, I've been involved. Um, and I'd like to say straight away that the Newt team have been incredibly enthusiastic and supportive with um the whole sort of project and how it's developed. So, Christina, yes, for the Arvarus team, Martha in the education department, yourself, Arthur. I mean, just meeting you in the first place and beginning to understand what was happening at the Newt and the potential to get the you know the Barn Owl program perhaps extended here. And the Barn Owl program comes out of the Hawk and Owl Trust. So that takes me back to when I first met Chris Sperring, who's the Conservation Officer South West for the Hawk and Owl Trust. I met Chris some 40 years ago, and with my farming background and growing up in the very rural and farming community in central Somerset, got to know Chris, started introducing him to farmers and landowners where I knew either owl sites existed or there was the potential to encourage them. That's how that's grown. Now, Chris can't possibly oversee the entire of the southwest and to territory. So he relies on certain people voluntarily to keep tabs on certain more focused areas, and and you know, that sort of Sumerton Ilchester Castle Carey area is an area that I would would basically oversee feedback information to Chris and go from there as part of the monitoring program. So meeting you, meeting the Newt team, becoming aware of what the Newt is as it's grown up and and and developed itself was an absolute obvious place to come and explore for our potential, and then realizing that there were already inroads into putting boxes on site before I even knew anybody at the Newt was a huge head start. Take that forward, like you say, a couple of years, and with some sort of suggestions and careful input and working with the Newt team, we've been able to fine-tune where some of those boxes were put up. Pretty good places, pretty good positioning, but not necessarily spot on first time. And like all these things, they they can take a little bit of tweaking and adjusting. And we've done that in a couple of areas over the last year to 18 months. And this year, if we look through the trees at a distance over there, there is a Barnow box, and that subtle step change, that little bit of a move that we gave it last year, has resulted in the first Barnowl chicks on the Newt site. They are now run as part of the Hawk and Owl Trust program, and that's a really, really important milestone for what we've been able to achieve, and of course, where we can take that next, and how we can further develop owl and other uh species activity on the site.

Arthur Cole 7:18

So, David, how many owl species have we got in Britain?

SPEAKER_01 7:25

Well, typically there's five species that would be classed as British owl species. You've got the barn owl, of course, which we're going to focus on much of today, the tawny owl, which you do have at the newt site as well, the little owl, which you also have at the newt site, um, and then the visiting migrant owls, the winter visitors, which are the long-eared owl and the short-eared owl, both of which are, you wouldn't actually get them onto the newt site anyway. Um, they might transit through very temporarily, but they wouldn't really stay or colonize or inhabit the newt site. It's not quite their territory, but you've got them very close by. So if we looked out to the east, to the sort of big, heavy woodland away from the Newt to the east, the big, heavily wooded countryside, Alfred's Tower of Stourhead, that's where you would get long-eared owls wintering. Um, and I know they are there. They come and go in different sort of numbers on any given year, but that's typical of the place you would get them. And just beyond that, um what I would call the foot of Salisbury Plain, so just beyond Stourhead, as you start to hit the sort of edge of that grassland, the beginning of the Salisbury Plain downland, that's where you would get wintering short eared owls. So actually, on the Newt site and within a short stones throw, you actually have all five species, and that's not something many places can claim. Fantastic.

Arthur Cole 8:52

So, could you give us a description of the barn owl?

SPEAKER_01 8:58

Interesting, beautiful to start with. I think this would be the first word I would use. Um, elusive. Of course, you don't really see them during the day, uh, unless there's a you know problems that cause them to fly during the day, which can happen. Talk about that later. Um, silent, yeah. Most people catch a glimpse of one perhaps at night on a country walk or if they're out in the garden in an area where barn owls are inhabiting. So to start with, you've got this really sort of mystic, elusive almost creature. White when you do catch a glimpse of it, which is you know quite startling for the brief moment you see it, and rare. So let's not overlook the fact that they are you know very much an endangered species, particularly in the West Country. Numbers, I know you're going to ask me how many numbers exist, and that's very, very difficult to put a figure on because each year it's it it varies. It can drop to maybe as low as 60, 70 pairs across the Somerset region that can rise up to maybe a couple of hundred pairs after two or three good years of breeding that hasn't been affected by climate or droughts or other or other impacts. But year on year it's very, very difficult to put a more exact figure on how many barn owls are out there. But we do know that they are not common and always on that knife edge of not quite going extinct, but certainly dropping to very, very significantly low numbers.

Arthur Cole 10:24

So they've got quite an iconic heart-shaped face. Is this just to look pretty to each other? Or is this an evolutionary design that's been honed over hundreds of thousands of years?

SPEAKER_01 10:39

Very much an evolutionary design for that owl and other owl species. Um you won't have to look through many books and pictures, um, and notice I encourage people there to look at books rather than just go for the digital norm, go back to books, there's lots of lots of lovely books out there to look at. Um look at books with many different owl species across the world. Barn Owl is one, of course, and yes, they do have that very round, sort of what we call a facial disc. Um, and the more you look at that in detail, it isn't just a round, it is very dished, and it's got lots of layers of feathers which actually can be flexed and extended to make that disc shape more concave, more saucer-shaped, and that's harnessing sound. It is basically a radar dish. Um, and that works in conjunction with their ears. Now, of course, you won't see the baronal's ears, they're varied amongst its feathers on its head, but they're extremely large compared to its other body features, its eyes, its beak and its head size. The ears are very large indeed, probably larger than a 50-pence piece in diameter, which is actually, when you think about it, very large for a bird's ears. And they're not equally spaced on each side of their head, they're very asymmetric. One is high and slightly forward, whereas the other one is in a slightly more normal position. So that combination of the ear position and that adjustable radar dish that they've got on the front of their face captures sound, captures sound that enables them to hunt because a lot of their hunting is actually done via sound and not purely visual. So they can hear mice and voles rustling through the grass as they're flying low over the grassland. It's why their feathers are so soft, they fly almost silently, and that enables them to capture then ground noise, the ground noise of mice either squeaking or rustling through the through the tight undergrowth on the ground. That's really how they hunt. So that whole facial disc on an owl and the ear positioning is vital to their survival.

Arthur Cole 12:48

Fascinating. We think of bats as being the echolocators in the skies. So if we think about the comparative sensitivity of our hearing as humans compared to other species, a cat, for example, has about five times the sensitivity of hearing than a human does. What does a barn owl have compared to our ears?

SPEAKER_01 13:17

Again, that's a really interesting one, Arthur. Um it will depend on the particular owl, of course. Um but uh yeah, I I believe owl species generally are about ten times, you know, about ten times more sensible than the human ear. Um and that has to be that way to be able to pinpoint a mouse going through undergrowth and grass. And that's also why it makes it so difficult for owls to hunt in poor weather. So if it's windy, they can't hear it the same. If it's raining too hard, they can't hear it the same as well as getting heaven water long. So yeah, they have to have really, really, really top hearing.

Arthur Cole 13:59

We're walking on the Viper, the aerial walkway that snakes through the forest canopy here. We're about 40 feet up in the air. We're surrounded by beech trees, there's a horn beam, some oaks, thankfully some ashes still hanging on. It's a mixed woodland environment here, and there is a I guess a lower cover of brambles, hazels, bird cherry. Is this habitat here, this mixed woodland, a beneficial habitat for the owls? And if so, what owls would you expect to find here?

SPEAKER_01 14:41

Absolutely, I mean I love it up here anyway. I think this is completely inspiring that this bridge walkway because it puts you up, like you just described, in the canopy. So we are up now looking down from where birds would often look rather than be on the ground as humans looking up. This gives everybody a completely different perspective, and I just love that. And yes, it's not that heavily densely wooded, it's a nice, what I would call sort of an open mixed woodland, and yes, you would get, particularly on that eastern edge where it's just that little bit more stepping onto the to the farmland itself, you would get a barn owl hunting through there. In fact, when I was up one evening just monitoring uh the owl box that we visited a short while ago, when I was just keeping an eye out on that at a safe distance three, four weeks ago, the owl left the box and actually flew out through this woodland. So it can hunt in here, it's not so densely packed. Tawny owls are better in heavier woodland and in parkland, and you've got those on the other side of the nuke site, so they're happy over there, that's good. Tawny owls and barn owls don't mix brilliantly well, but if they've got their own habitat areas, then they play nicely. Um that's uh but the little owl, you would get the little owl on the edge of this woodland. Um, you would also get the kestrel, which I've seen regularly hunting along again, this eastern side of the wood, and they don't compete for their food. You know, they're out at different times of the day. There's enough food that the newt's creating here with you know the patchwork of farmland and the parkland, which forms the sort of core of the newt site. There's enough generating the food species that they need. So barn owls predominantly want voles and mice, kestrels, yes, voles and mice, but also some small birds and insects. They eat a lot of insects, catch dragonflies, catch large bugs and beetles, as does the little owl. So the little owl probably eats more worms and beetles and bugs than it does mice and other food forms. So, with what the newt is creating with its habitat and the spacing that you've got here, which then flows out onto the open farmland, there's enough to go around and there's also no competition of territories and space.

Arthur Cole 17:08

We're standing here in the canopy of this mixed open woodland, and as we look out beyond it to the margin, we have the open farmland, a mosaic of hedgerows, mixed woodland. Some of the farm fields look like they've been ploughed, others are green, and as our eye goes further to the farthest horizon, there we have the mist and the fog just covering the high point, which is the border with Wiltshire, Stourhead Estate, coniferous woodland mainly on that ridge, with the proud point of Alfred's Tower sticking out above it as the highest point. David, you mentioned briefly about two part-time residents that come to our shores. You said that that's where they live. Can you tell us a little more about them?

SPEAKER_01 18:14

Well, the the long-eared owl, long-eared owl and short-eared owl are the two species you're referring to there. The long-eared owl would typically enjoy that dense, more forested area that you're referring to there over its Stour Head, over near Alfred's Tower. You get them up on the Mendips. You do get them down on areas of sedge more amongst some of the blackthorn thickets and scrub. They just like that dense, very, very tight, heavily condensed sort of tree bush areas. So they're not really an owl for the open farmland like we have immediately in front of us. They come in the winter, they'll be arriving. If you think we're in September now, they will begin to arrive probably from late October, November onwards, although things are changing. Lots of things are happening sort of a month, what I call a month to the left, a month earlier than maybe 40-50 years ago. So it wouldn't surprise to see some of these wintering species turning up a little earlier. Beyond that tree line, of course, is where we described the edge of Salisbury Plain, the open grassland, and that's the home of the short-eared owl. Again, you get them down on uh the sedgemoor moors, the flatlands there, but they're not so inclined to go into tree and wooded and forest areas. They like the open flat grasslands and that Tusekee grassland. So within six, eight miles from where we're standing now, you would see across the winter uh both of those wintering species, maybe from November onwards, departing again, heading back to Scandinavia or Northern Europe, Denmark, Germany, Eastern Europe areas, is where they would typically come from. Where it's obviously a lot colder typically in the winter months, and over thousands and thousands of years, they've learned to migrate this way where it's not so severe during the winter months. But that's interesting as well because it's not just owls, the field fare, the you know, the the migratory thrush that we get here again from Scandinavia and from uh Germany and northern Europe, much reduced last year in numbers here. Um, typically over the years I would expect to see flocks of 15, 20, maybe even 30 at times, that chattering, that that very, very raucous chattering noise that the field fare gives comes with the red wing, the other thrush. Last year, honestly, I saw less than 15 field fares for the whole of the winter, and I wasn't the only one to notice this. Other people were saying much reduced numbers. But it was a very mild winter, very, very mild winter, and I do wonder whether it was also mild enough in northern Europe and lower parts of Scandinavia that maybe they didn't feel they needed to come all the way to England for their winter? I don't know. I mean that will be something that people will study in years to come and perhaps work that out. But certainly here where I would have expected to see many, many more, they just weren't here in the numbers. Maybe we will see that pattern with the owls as well. I don't know. This is what the building up of the data is all about.

Arthur Cole 21:17

So, David, how would our listeners identify the different species of owls at night without seeing them?

SPEAKER_01 21:27

Fairly straightforward, and it's a question we often get asked is is uh our people describe an owl noise they've heard and they think it's one type and not another, and you can quite quickly begin to point out to people, you know, which owl they probably have. The easiest one, the commonest one to identify is the tawny owl, the to it to woo, and that typical sort of you know, hear it in the movies, hear it on the spooky films, you've got that woo hoo hoo noise going in the background.

Arthur Cole 21:59

Can you Spell either rim or confirm it. Does it take two to to woo?

SPEAKER_01 22:06

Yes. It's one calling to the other. One's doing a kiwick and the other one's doing a woo back. So that to wit to woo is two owls calling it a. The little owl has its most common call is like a a little shriek, a little yelp, a little noise. Very repetitive, and can you know that can go on for half a minute sometimes, often during the daytime as well. So they will do it right at the end of the evening while it's still light, even sometimes during the day. So that can be a clue that it's a little owl, not a tawny owl. And people often call that a screech owl, but it's not, it's the little owl making a funny little scelp. The screech owl is actually the old name for the barn owl. And that's uh not necessarily a screech like you might first imagine it, but it's more like a long, skirly, drawn out kind of hiss. And you might just catch a quick sound snap of that in an evening on a country lane where an owl is hunting or maybe calling back to young which are nearby, and it's sort of a very long, drawn-out shh, like a like a like a rough hitty noise.

Arthur Cole 23:31

David, I'd like to get on to the thorny question of the threats and perhaps the conservation efforts that are going on with owls. David, how are Britain's barn owls doing today?

SPEAKER_01 23:45

Precarious, holding their own, but it's precarious. The numbers, as we said, are are you know fluctuate greatly. There are not vast numbers of them in any region across the UK. They are you know listed as one of the endangered species. All British birds are protected, of course, but then you have your red or amber listed species, and and varn owls are clearly on that red list, the red-listed species. Numbers are never high. There's a lot of impacts, of course, you know, in the modern world, uh, housing developments, road system developments, um, the way that agriculture has become more intense in some areas, all has an effect on the food for the barn owl and the habitat. And those are the two things which have to be borne in mind. If you if you want owls in particular, you need to create the food source in the habitat, and that's what's happening here at the Newt, which is why you've got the David.

Arthur Cole 24:48

We've come in out of the rain and we're in a column building. It is the Dove Cut, and we're gonna go up and peek out from the top. We're walking up the circular staircase, and um, as we come up to the top, David, you've spied evidence on the on the steps there. What did you see?

SPEAKER_01 25:21

Barnow pellets. Um barn owls swallow their food whole. Um, they don't tear up meat like you know people perhaps think they do, they swallow their food whole, digest it, and then regurgitate the sort of the skin and the bones, which is why you get the pellets. Sounds disgusting, I know, but that's the way they do it. Um and there's evidence clearly here in the Dovecot of barn owl activity. They will be using this at night to come and roost or um somewhere to just rest up while they're eating their catch and digesting it. Um, and it's you know, for a barn owl, it's ideal. We we we call them barn owls, um, but for many, many years, of course, before human beings made barns, they were still around. Um, so what barn owls are looking for is a crag, an opening, somewhere like a cliff face with a bit of a crag and an aperture to go in out of the wind, out of the rain, maybe to make a nest, an old tree uh that's got a big crag and a hole in it, um, which are becoming fewer in the landscape. We don't grow oaks and uh significant traditional species trees for house building or for shipbuilding like we did two or three hundred years ago. And therefore, we're not succession planting trees the same. Uh, we're very good at cutting down the old ones and turning them into log burner fuel, but we're not thinking about growing trees that will then become mature and allow to age two or three hundred years old that have got a hole in. That's where a barn would have nested before we came along and built barns. Now, we obviously watch them adapt as man has adapted and built structures and buildings. Um, and you know, they end up getting called barnals, but but of course, yeah, that they're not barn dwellers at all. Um so yeah, if we can think about how we use our buildings, and there are things we can do, put up boxes like we're doing at the youth. So where we do our own diversifying and convert a barn or change our our own small industrial landscape within a farm or a village area, there are things you can do which will still be useful for the owl. They will they will adapt quite quickly in many areas if we give them a hand.

Arthur Cole 27:35

Great. Well, this dove is home to doves, and I'm delighted that it is also home to a barn owl, or at least it's considered a worthy enough resting place for one. And if we look out through essentially the window of our dovecote here, and visitors can come and see this, we're looking out towards Cadbury Castle in the distance, and the nearest tree line, hedge line, we can see two of the barn owl boxes, and those have been positioned in what orientation, David?

SPEAKER_01 28:11

Specifically put in the tree at a sort of a height which suits a barn owl. They they don't like to nest too high. Um, so that's sort of 12 to 16 feet from the ground is a good working height for a barn owl. Um with the box entrance facing east-northeast, they like to have the back of the box uh to the wind and the weather. In the southwest, the prevailing wind is is is from the southwest typically. They like to be able to sit in the entrance of the box and catch the morning sun if it's a nice morning, and they like to go in and and sort of withdraw into the box if it's if it's a rough uh weather day or night and have the wind and the rain on the back of the box. So east-northeast is the best orientation for the box, and that's why we position those those two there. Two boxes because they often like a roost box if it's a successful nest chamber. Um, when the chicks get to about five or six weeks old, it's a bit like a war zone in the nest each day. They're clamoring for food all the time. If they see the parents, they just pester and call and scratch and scrabble for food. Um, so when they get to about five or six weeks old, which is sort of late teenage in owl terms, the parents leave home. Uh, and they go and they go and hole up in the roost box during the day uh and then come back to the main box to start the feeding cycle at night. So two boxes can often work quite well to attract an owl pair to settle on that that particular spot.

Arthur Cole 29:43

So we're hoping that's what will happen there. Well, it's lovely to see those boxes and promising that we're gonna be running out even more of these boxes. So thank you, David, and thank you to the arborists and Christina are helping you put them up. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 29:59

Without without their input, and of course, without your kind permission to come and do it, this wouldn't be happening on this scale, and the the the potential on the newt site clearly is there to encourage more barn owls up to a point. They have their own territory limits, but also little owl and kestrel as well. So, as a whole program, there's there's a lot of scope here to create um more of those rare species on site.

Arthur Cole 30:26

Wonderful, the rich diversity of the newt, and we're playing our own small part in helping to facilitate it. As we're walking down from the Viper towards the Roman villa, we've got some swallows playing above our heads. It's quite late on in the season for these. What's going on here, David?

SPEAKER_01 30:53

Yes, Heist Martins and Swallows. You can look at them, oh, they're all like a cloud of them ducking and weaving and swooping, staying over the trees. They're picking up any of the insects they can find which are coming up off of the tree canopy there, and basically topping up their food source. They're all beginning to think about that massive journey they've got ahead of them, heading to Africa for the winter, they'll be heading away any week now, and suddenly there'll be no swallows around and they're gone for the next year. So, yeah, they're just stocking up on food. Uh, youngsters are learning their flying skills. The swallows in particular are very good at teaching the young out of the nest how to fly, following them around and around. So, yeah, it's just all flying training and feeding up, ready for the big journey south. I often think, what do they get out of insects? The energy they can extract from insects, which allows them to fly thousands and thousands of miles. You know, that always astonishes me that they're able to find enough energy to fly those vast distances from just insects. It's quite amazing.

Arthur Cole 32:02

So, David, we can hear the road over there that connects Shetmallock with Winkanton. And just how significant is road mortality when we're talking about Barn owl's numbers?

SPEAKER_01 32:16

Very significant indeed. There's a lot of Barn owl casualty um caused by today's traffic, yeah, road traffic. The volume, of course, if you go back 50, 60, 70 years, there were still problems there with it with an owl colliding with uh a vehicle on the roadside, but nothing like the amount of uh potential for today. The speed of traffic is higher, the volume is much, much greater, and often we're going back to making that combination of links between uh development, and it can be road development as well as housing development, and the farmed landscape. So if you haven't got good habitat in farmland away from the road, then very often the best habitat for mice and voles, which is what the barn owl needs, is actually the roadside verge itself. And people probably don't necessarily look at it like I do when I'm driving around, but I'm sort of programmed to look at the fields around as I'm driving along a road, and yes, they look farmed, and yes, the farmer's busy at work, and yes, there's crops in them, but very often the hedge might be quite tightly cut, or the field might be cropped or ploughed right the way up to the hedge line on the field side, so the rough tussocky grass that the mice and bulls live in are on the roadside, and of course, that immediately puts the owl in danger when it's needing to hunt for that food at night. So that's the importance of creating margin, creating rough patches in the corners of fields, taking the mouse environment. Basically, what you want to do is create the mouse environment away from the road, which will then draw the owl away from the road. So it's it's it's all of these things are basically just how we think about how we're using the landscape, not just for our own need, but how we can put things back into the wider countryside for barn owls and other species.

Arthur Cole 34:13

And what effect do rodenticides have on owls?

SPEAKER_01 34:19

Uh not good, of course, you know, anything which is creating a poison which is ingested into the food source, you know, whether it's for us or whether it's for one of the uh wildlife species, is going to have an effect if we go back to uh the 1950s when DDT was being extensively used across farmland, UK and anywhere else in the world, a lot of the bird of prey and owl species numbers dropped like a stone. And you had things like peregrine falcon was was almost extinct in Great Britain because it was feeding on pigeons and other birds which were feeding on crops, which were eating the seeds and crops which have been farmed and picking up the DDT residues. So they they proved that quite early on that that was having an effect, and it runs right the way through any kind of chemical or pesticide or insecticide which is being used. Sooner or later, that's going to pick up in the food source for other birds of prey and owls as well as other species. So, yes, there will be a slow but increasing element of poisoning in the system. Now, DDT is no longer used, thankfully, and you've seen the return of many, many species. Peregrine falcons are back up in number now, particularly across the southwest. Buzzard numbers, which actually do prey on uh carrion and other small catches live, but they they will eat a lot of worms and grubs on the ground. People see buzzards walking around on the ground and wonder you know why they're doing that. They're grubbing, that's actually what they they do. They will eat worms, bugs, beetles. But again, when pesticides and chemicals were more heavily used, they were then directly ingesting that. So buzzard numbers were very, very low in the 1960s and 70s. They're back up to you know, completely almost fully populated in the UK now. I can remember walking miles with my brother in the early 1970s to see a buzzard. Yeah, we were told there was a buzzard uh in a nearby woods, and we walked and walked and walked and finally saw it, and that was the first one we'd ever seen. I can probably see a dozen between here and the oval. You know, and that's wonderful, but but in 40 years, that's that's the change. Um, so they've gone from very low numbers to to to back up, but that's because farming is just progressively getting less dependent on sprays and pesticides and insecticides. It is all measurable and noticeable.

Arthur Cole 36:45

Well, we've now reached the part at the end of what we used to call the terrace, what we know as the deer park now. We're about to go through the gate and out into some of our arable fields just before the Raven Villa, and we're gonna walk the margins. So, David, as we step through the gate, we've now got on one side of us a broad, thick margin of scrubby, wildflowery roughness. Um, there are sunflower seed heads poking up above it, brown seed heads from wildflowers, different grasses, bit of thistle. It's pretty scrubby. And on the other side of that, there is a mixed, a line of mixed woodland. And on our right, opposite it, we've again got a margin of wildflower, sunflower, a bit of thistle, a bit of wild grasses, and then what is an arable field just showing the stubble now and the lines where the combine has come over. Is this good habitat?

SPEAKER_01 38:01

Excellent. It's lovely. And what you've described there is is almost the perfect combination and harmony. I mean, you've got productive farming happening, of course. Farmers have got to be productive, they've got to be um producing crops, uh making the landscape work for them. But look what else you've described around. Have you got a great hedge line, very, very sort of old, ancient hedge line behind there, a mixture of bushes and trees that's full of berries, seeds, um, insects as well, um, bringing it right forward to what you've described there is the sicily scrubby margins, sunflowers, sea heads, thistles, fantastic. You'll have goldfinches, green finches, you know, feeding on that, chaffinches. Only uh a week or so ago, when I was here walking around with with Christina from the garden team, looking at other potential barn owl sites, we were walking along a similar area on on the north side of the Newt site, yeah, a margin like that that had wildflowers and sunflowers, and up got a flock of at least 30, 30 plus greenfinches all been feeding on those seeds. I haven't seen a flock of green finches feeding like that, gleaning on sort of late summer, early autumn seeds. I haven't seen that since the 1970s uh when I was kind of farming in in the Long Sutton area. So just magnificent to see, and that and that's why I would describe what's happening here at the nude is nature farming. You hear these phrases that come out, and and I'm often slightly wary of the phrases, rewilding can be taken a little bit wrong sometimes. I think people think it's just leaving things to become uh an unmanaged, unkempt wilderness mess, um, which is not the truth at all, you know. And if you understand rewilding and what's you know the purpose behind it, it's it's not that. If it needs a name at all, um I would have preferred to maybe call it nature farming, and I think that's what's happening at the newt. I mean, I'm seeing nature farming happening across the whole site where you've got good productive farmland, but it's it's being worked in harmony with nature and it's providing hedgerows, margins, opportunities for wildlife to thrive. Nature farming.

Arthur Cole 40:20

So, David, what changes in the farming landscape have you seen been witness to in your years here in in this part of the world?

SPEAKER_01 40:32

Many. Um, certainly in the central Somerset area where farming in many locations was quite in a sense old-fashioned, low scale, low intensity, more smaller farms still active, and of course, many of those haven't been able to remain viable, so some of the farming community has diminished from that point of view. And then the sold lands uh through the 1980s. There was quite a trend of joining farms together and then maybe going through a sort of a more intensive trend of taking out hedges, making fields bigger, just following that that need almost to make farming more productive through that period of time. But it's returning, and you're seeing many, many more farms now going back to thinking about wildlife and nature. And it's easy to paint uh a sort of negative picture you hear so much on the news of everything's in trouble, um, species are dying out, everything is you know doom and gloom, and it's not. There are actually quite a lot of positive messages out there. We've got species coming back that haven't been around for 50, 60, 70 years, red kites, uh, barn owls are doing okay, they could do with some more help. Glow worms in some areas, those little beetles that light up in the evening light, rare now, but there are still pockets of those around. Peregrine falcons, of course, coming back in good numbers. There's quite a lot of success stories, and insects, insects, I think, are increasing. Yes, we could do with a lot more insect life, but everybody seems to be thinking about that and doing their their no-mo may and leaving little pieces of rougher grassland on farms or in gardens, and everybody's little bit is actually adding up to quite a lot. So, yeah, I think there's some good news stories out there. Instead of maybe everybody thinking it's bad news, things are changing and farming's changing again. I go back to look what you can see here with what I call the nature farming, it makes a big difference.

Arthur Cole 42:33

Oh David, it's so refreshing to have a story that's inspirational and full of hope that is to do with our wildlife and our wildlife margins. It feels that we're in constant conflict between the human world and our need to develop and thrive economically, often at the expense of the wildlife. But as we've witnessed here today, they're not mutually exclusive. Humans can be productive and economically successful, whilst also working alongside nature, creating habitat, protecting it, and seeing certainly some species like the bar now thrive.

SPEAKER_01 43:26

Indeed. I think it's easy to forget, you know, we're all busy human beings, but but we are part of the natural world. We share it, we don't own it. I think it's easy sometimes to forget that as human beings we all think we own the world. We share it with nature, you know, we we don't own the world, we only share part of it. So it's nice that there's so many things happening here and other places that I've I've seen where people are putting back in to the countryside or their environment something good, something positive, something useful, which is encouraging many many species to come back up in numbers and thrive. And that'd great if people are doing that. We're all doing the right thing.

Arthur Cole 44:12

David Morris, thank you for working with our teams, thank you for helping bolster our Barnau numbers here, and thank you for coming on the newt podcast.

SPEAKER_01 44:23

Well, thank you, Arthur. It's not just a pleasure, it's a privilege to actually be involved in some of the nude initiatives. Thank you very much.

Arthur Cole 44:41

Thank you for listening. Subscribe and tune in for more episodes from the estate every month. See you next time.